Gus stared at her. He never knew if she was lying or not.
“The boredom, of course, is that he becomes so bad tempered on the mornings afterward, after begging me to do it,” said Yvonne.
“Where did you first connect with Constantine de Rham?”
“I was in Paris on my way to Brazil to meet the grandmother of a man I was at the time engaged to marry,” said Yvonne. Yvonne enjoyed telling Gus tales of her adventures. She saw herself as the basis for a character in a novel and could even imagine herself saying at some future dinner party. “Oh, that Gus Bailey. That awful man. He based that character on me, but he got it all wrong. I should sue. Really, I should,” but all the time basking in the importance that the notoriety gave her.
“Rudi Guevara, he was called,” she said, going on with her story. “Did you hear of him? His brother was the polo player, Carlos Guevara?”
“No,” answered Gus. “I don’t know any of those people.”
“His grandmother had all the money, and Rudi insisted I meet her before we married so that we could be in her good graces. At the last minute the grandmother got sick, and the trip was canceled. At least I got canceled. Rudi went on to Brazil. I was all alone in Paris and didn’t know many people there. There was a big party that night for an American financier, and they needed an extra girl, someone pretty, and a friend of a friend suggested that I go.”
“Was the friend of the friend Madam Myra, by any chance?”
Yvonne looked at Gus and ignored his interruption. “I suppose I was meant to provide amusement for the rich American. I was asked to come in late, after dinner, something I wouldn’t do now, come in after dinner—it’s an insult to be asked to come in after dinner—but I was lonely and had nothing better to do. Are you listening?”
“Yes, I’m listening,” said Gus.
“I was looking great that night. I even remember what I was wearing, a little number from Dior that Rudi bought me to knock them dead in Brazil, and I put his engagement ring on the other hand and went to the party. When I walked into the party, there was the financier sitting on a chair with his teenage daughter on his lap. When he saw me, he stood up, and the daughter went toppling over on the floor. The financier didn’t even notice her. He came right over to me and introduced himself. He had a big fat stomach, and he was drunk, but he was said to be one of the richest men in America, and everyone overlooked his drawbacks. He followed me around all night and kept whispering to me that he was going to marry me.”
“How does Constantine de Rham fit into this story?”
“Constantine rescued me from the rich, fat, drunk American. He was so charming.”
“I see. And it went on from there?”
“It went on from there,” answered Yvonne.
“What about the Brazilian?”
“Oh, Rudi. He got lost along the way.”
For a while they sat, saying nothing.
“I thought you were a good reporter, Gus?”
Gus shrugged.
“You didn’t ask me who the rich, fat, drunk American was.”
“You’re right. I didn’t.”
“Elias Renthal.”
Gus did not react to what she had said. He had long ago learned to look as if nothing startled him.
“That was just before he met the present Mrs. Renthal, of course, Ruby, and she classed him up,” said Yvonne.
“You mean, if you’d played your cards right that night in Paris, you might be the immensely rich Mrs. Elias Renthal these days, instead of the companion, with quotation marks, as Mavis Jones refers to you in her column, to Constantine de Rham.”
“Something like that,” replied Yvonne, shaking her head, to indicate she had made a wrong choice.
“My feeling is that Constantine is not generous with you. Am I correct?” asked Gus.
“It’s a myth that Constantine is so rich,” answered Yvonne. “He’s not. A few million, that’s all, that he can’t even touch the principal on.”
“That’s not rich, a few million?”
“Rich to him, perhaps,” she answered, pointing her fork at the waiter, Michael, with the ponytail, who was removing the dishes from the table, as if he were blind and deaf. “But not rich like people are rich nowadays, like Elias Renthal is rich, for instance. Now that’s rich.”
“What’s going to happen to you? Where are you going to live now?”
“In the house on Sutton Place. Where else? It’s a divine house. You saw it. Whatever one thought about Consuelo, she had perfect taste. The house couldn’t be more comfortable.”
“But surely you can’t continue to stay there when Constantine gets home from the hospital?”
“Of course. He’ll need me then.”
“How will he feel having you there after what happened?”
“Safe,” said Yvonne simply. She smiled.
Gus shook his head and laughed. “What was really the purpose of this lunch?” he asked.
“Chick Jacoby has taken to seating me in the back room,” she said. “And I wanted a better table.”
Gus signaled for a check. When he was helping Yvonne into her coat, he said to her, from behind, “That’s your book, Yvonne. The story you just told me. Big bucks in a book like that, and you like big bucks. Ms. Myra’s Girl, you could call it. Forget about your grandmother giving head to King Zog of Albania.”
25
Behind Ruby Renthal’s back, there was no snickering. Those who took it upon themselves to instruct her in fashion, in decoration, in French, in literature, and in life, their kind of life, became her champions. They were entertained by her wit. They were charmed by her honesty. They were struck by her determination to learn, and to learn fast.
Jamesey Crocus, who had been handed over to Ruby Renthal by Loelia Manchester, for assistance in her furniture-buying spree, gave a practiced eye to Ruby’s console tables, finally arrived, from the Orromeo auction in London. When people spoke of Jamesey Crocus, they usually added “who knows his antiques.” He was a connoisseur of objects of art who liked nothing better than to give advice, with an air of expert knowledge, on furniture, porcelain, carpets, and paintings.
“Marvelous, Ruby,” he said, moving one of Lorenza’s multicolored rose bouquets aside to touch the marble top and rub his hand over an inlaid ram’s head. “Simply marvelous.”
Ruby modestly preened a great collector’s kind of preening, as if Jamesey’s words were a compliment to her increasingly expert eye for French eighteenth-century furniture.
“Klaus van Rijn himself made these,” Jamesey Crocus went on. “I recognize his work every time. A genius, van Rijn. Wasn’t even French, you know. Lived in Antwerp, and he made these simply brilliant reproductions of eighteenth-century French furniture. I went to see him once, when I was studying with Bernard Berenson at I Tatti, but he was so old and doddering by then that he wasn’t making sense.”
Ruby’s face went white. “Reproductions? Surely, Jamesey, you can’t think my console tables are reproductions?” She almost, but did not, tell him that she had paid a half million dollars for them.
“About nineteen thirty-six, I would think. The late thirties were his peak years. He didn’t make much furniture during the war. I, for one, never believed those stories that he was a collaborator. It was simply that he was besotted with a German soldier, and all those stories started that ruined him. Mr. Berenson believed—”
But Ruby was not listening to the saga of Klaus van Rijn. “You must be wrong, Jamesey,” she said, remembering not to lose her new cultured speaking voice that she had copied from Loelia Manchester, even in an urgent moment. “These console tables were from the Orromeos’ house in London.”
“Old Bolivio Orromeo had a lot of van Rijn pieces. He really foxed the auctioneers, you know, when he went broke and sold everything. The auctioneers were furious when they found out. But these are very good, Ruby. You could realize forty or fifty thousand for them any day. I guarantee you.”
“Nineteen thirty-s
ix?” she asked.
“Thereabouts.”
“A lousy fifty years old? That’s all?”
“More or less.”
“Get rid of them,” said Ruby.
“What? You can’t be serious, Ruby.”
“Get rid of them. I only want the best in this house. No repros. But, for God’s sake, don’t tell Elias they’re fakes.”
“Heavens, no,” said Jamesey.
“He’d kill me.”
“Nonsense,” laughed Jamesey. “They say there are only two things in the world Elias Renthal loves: making money and Ruby Renthal.”
“He’d still kill me. I haven’t told you how much I paid for those lousy fakes.”
Jamesey Crocus snapped his fingers as an idea came to his mind. “You know, Ruby, I have the most marvelous idea for these console tables,” said Jamesey.
26
Other than Loelia Manchester, Jamesey Crocus, and Cora Mandell, Gus Bailey was the only person allowed to see the new residence of Elias and Ruby Renthal prior to the splendid ball that was being planned to launch it. His visit, which was professional, had been arranged for by Loelia Manchester and Jamesey Crocus, who felt that a Sunday piece in the Times Magazine would be an important way for the rich newcomers to talk about their many charitable interests, especially since Florian Gray had started referring to Ruby in his column as the Billionaire’s Wife.
The fabulous Renthal Impressionist and Post-Impressionist art collection, ever growing, rested against the drawing-room walls, ready to be hung after the final of the nineteen coats of persimmon lacquer had been applied to the huge room. Ancestral portraits of other people’s ancestors, grand ladies and patrician gentlemen, some in coronation robes, by Sargent and Boldini and Oswald Birley, leaned against the hall and dining-room walls.
“That’s King Boris of Bulgaria, in hunting attire,” explained Elias to Gus, in his role of art collector.
Drop cloths covered pieces of antique furniture, which Jamesey Crocus told Gus over and over again were of museum quality, ready to be arranged. Upholstered pieces, the trademark of Cora Mandell’s look of cozy grandeur, were wrapped tight in brown paper and tied with ropes. All work was at a momentary standstill, waiting for the nineteenth coat of persimmon lacquer to dry before the twentieth and final coat could be applied.
“Elias adores collecting. He thinks nothing of getting on our plane and flying anywhere when Maisie Verdurin or our curator, Jamesey Crocus, tell him about any artwork that is coming on the market,” said Ruby. She had become conversant in matters of art and furniture and porcelain and decoration and knew the history of each addition to her new collections.
Gus Bailey marveled at the transformation of Ruby Renthal since their first meeting at one of Maisie Verdurin’s dinners, when she had been dressed in bright blue sequins and shared with Gus a deep secret of her life that bound the two of them together. Since then, almost no reference to that moment had ever been repeated on the several occasions they had met in New York, but there was an unspoken understanding between them. Dressed now in simple but stylish elegance in a black-and-white hounds-tooth skirt and black cashmere sweater that perfectly showed her splendid breasts that people said had been reduced to their present perfection by cosmetic surgery in Brazil, she lounged gracefully on the edge of a packing case. Her only jewelry was the massive diamond she wore on her engagement finger. She had removed the hounds-tooth jacket that matched her skirt, and it lay next to her, the label Nevel, Leven spelled backwards, visible on its satin lining. Her smart Minardos pump dangled elegantly on the tip of her toe as she described their life.
“As you can see, we’re camping out, Mr. Bailey,” she said, and they all chuckled, as if Mrs. Renthal had made a witticism. “But if we don’t, you see, the work will never get finished.”
“How many houses do you have, Mrs. Renthal?” asked Gus.
“Does that include apartments?” she asked. “We have apartments, you know, in both London and Paris.”
“Yes, of course,” said Gus, adjusting his notes. “Homes, I should have said, not houses.”
Ruby, puzzled, turned to her husband. “Is it eight or nine, darling?” she asked.
“We sold Palm Beach,” replied Elias, nervously.
“But bought in Nassau,” answered Ruby, as if to remind him of something he had forgot. She thought she detected a signal to halt from her husband.
“Nine, Mr. Bailey,” said Elias, answering the question put to Ruby by Gus. “But, you know, that don’t sound so good in the papers and the magazines, if you see what I mean.”
Ruby mouthed but did not speak the word doesn’t to Elias, correcting his grammar, in the way she had watched Lil Altemus mouth but not speak words.
“What?” asked Elias.
“Nothing,” said Ruby.
There had also been a transformation in Elias Renthal, Gus noticed, a kind of sureness of self that comes with the accumulation of great wealth and the public respect that wealth engenders. There were neighbors Elias encountered in the elevator of his own exclusive building who still did not speak to him and continued to refer to his apartment as Matilda Clarke’s apartment, but the doormen and the elevator men in the building, who were recipients of his large tips, gave him precedence over all the old swells who had dwelled there for decades. That, coupled with his change of tailor, gave the stout financier an impressive and even friendly presence.
“I’ll keep it at eight, if you think that will sound better,” replied Gus. “Is that complicated? Eight houses?”
“Oh, puleeze,” replied Ruby, in the same way that she had heard Loelia say puleeze, “Just to remember the names of the staff in each house is complicated. And I always find that the shoes I need for the dress I’m going to wear that night are in the apartment in Paris when I need them in London and then the plane has to go and pick them up. This is all off the record, Mr. Bailey. This is what Loelia calls the problems of the very, very rich.”
Gus shrugged. “This is good stuff you’re telling me I can’t write.”
“Do you see, Elias, how nice Mr. Bailey is? My husband is convinced, simply convinced, that the press is out to get us.”
“I meant the financial press, Ruby,” said Elias.
“And he thinks my picture is in the paper too much, too, Mr. Bailey,” said Ruby.
“It is,” said Elias.
“ ‘The Billionaire’s Wife,’ ” said Gus. “How could it be otherwise?”
“I wish I could get my hands on whoever gave me that name,” said Ruby. “It makes me sound like a lady who lunches, and I’m not, except occasionally. I want to do something meaningful. The problem is that there are so many causes after us, and I haven’t sorted out yet what it is that we are going to concentrate on. I mean, of course, after the museum and the ballet.”
“Do you always have bodyguards, Mr. Renthal?” he asked.
“Oh, yes, twenty-four hours a day. They work in shifts,” said Elias, beginning to relax. “When I drive to and from our house in the country, or to and from my office, I don’t like them in the car with me, not even up front with the chauffeur, because I do a great deal of work in my car, mostly on the telephone, and I don’t like other people listening to me, so the guards always follow in a second car.”
“I see,” said Gus, making a note. “Have you ever been threatened or harmed?”
“No. But, you know, there are so many mad people out there who read about people like us.”
“My husband is security mad, Mr. Bailey,” said Ruby. “He built a ten-foot-high brick wall all around our place in the country, with electrified wire on top of the wall. And guards everywhere you look.”
“Ruby,” said Elias, in mock exasperation, as if to control her.
“It’s true,” she went on. “And even this. He wants me to carry a gun. Look at this little pearl-handled number he gave me as a stocking present last Christmas. It used to belong to Queen Marie of Rumania. Elias bought it at auction in London and had Purdy’s
put it in working order.”
“Ruby,” repeated Elias.
“Fits right into my bag, it’s so small. I wouldn’t dream of using it, no matter what, but it makes Elias happy for me to carry it.”
“How about if I take you on a tour of the apartment, Mr. Bailey,” said Elias, standing up to terminate the interview.
Later, dressing for a party, Ruby said to Elias, “Who’s Byron Macumber?”
Elias, who was putting studs in his evening shirt, paused, startled. “Why?” he asked.
“Why?” repeated Ruby. “What kind of an answer is why to your own wife?”
“Oh, he’s just some kid who works for Weldon and Stinchfield,” replied Elias.
“He’s a lawyer then?”
“Yeah, a junior lawyer. Why this big interest in Byron what’s-his-name?”
“Charming on the telephone. He called you when you were taking Gus Bailey for the tour of the apartment. He wants you to call him. He said you knew the number.”
“He called here?” There was surprise in Elias’s tone.
“Yes, Elias, Byron Macumber called here, and your wife answered the telephone, and he asked that you call him as soon as you were free. Where are you going?”
“I’m going downstairs. I left my briefcase down there.”
* * *
“What the fuck are you calling me at my house for, you asshole?” said Elias, in whispered fury into the telephone.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Renthal, but you’d left your office, and I knew by morning that the word would be out, and I thought that you’d want to know.”
“What word?”
“Omaha Natural Gas has hired Weldon and Stinchfield as adviser in connection with a proposal by Tri-World, Inc., to acquire ONG,” said Byron Macumber.
“Holy shit,” said Elias.
“I’m sorry I bothered you at home, Mr. Renthal.”
“No, no, Byron. I’m sorry I blew my stack. You did the right thing. Now, listen, it’s not a good idea to call me here at home, but if you have to, here’s a different number, five-five-five, four-one-two-eight, my own private line. I’ll put a message machine on it by tomorrow, and just leave a message, and I’ll get back to you, and, listen, Byron, use a different name. You’re Mr. Brown. Okay?”
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